Ezekiel 17:5

5 Then he took a young plant from the land of Israel and planted it in a fertile field, where there was always water to make it grow.

Ezekiel 17:5 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 17:5

He took also of the seed of the land
Of the land of Judea, a native of it, not a stranger; not one of another country, a Babylonian; not one of his own nobles or princes, did Nebuchadnezzar, the eagle, take and set upon the throne of Judea, but one of their own, even one of the king's seed, of the blood royal, as it is explained, ( Ezekiel 17:13 ) , Mattaniah, the uncle of Jeconiah, whom the king of Babylon called Zedekiah, and made him king in his room: and planted it in a fruitful field;
in the land of Judea, and in Jerusalem the royal city: he placed [it] by great waters;
many people, ( Revelation 17:15 ) ; over whom he ruled, and by whom he was supported in his royal dignity: [and] set it [as] a willow tree;
which loves moist places, and grows up thick: unless it should be rendered, "he set it with great circumspection" ^F19; took a great deal of care and caution in placing him upon the throne; he made a covenant with him, took an oath of him, and hostages for the performance of it, ( Ezekiel 17:13 ) . The Targum is,

``a planted vine he set it,''

to make it agree with what follows; but the word in the Chaldee and Arabic languages signifies a kind of willow, as we render it, as Ben Melech observes ^F20.

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FOOTNOTES:

F19 (wmv hpupu) "circumspectissime posuit illud, Junins & Tremellius, Polanus; "cum magna circumspectione", Piscator; "circumspecte, Cocceius, Starckius.
F20 And so it does; see Castel, col. 3220, 3221. and in this way Jarchi and Kimchi interpret the word, in which they are followed by many; so R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 73. 1. nevertheless, the sense of it here is disapproved of by Castel, who observes, what has a willow to do with a vine? col. 3222. and commends the Greek version, which renders it, (epiblepomenon) , "conspicuous", to be seen; and so others translate it, "in superficie", V. L. Grotius; yet the "safsaf" of the Arabs is a tree by which they understood the "abeile" or poplar tree; see Shaw's Travels, p. 432. Ed. 2.

Ezekiel 17:5 In-Context

3 to let them know what I, the Sovereign Lord, am saying to them: There was a giant eagle with beautiful feathers and huge wings, spread wide. He flew to the Lebanon Mountains and broke off the top of a cedar tree,

4 which he carried to a land of commerce and placed in a city of merchants.

5 Then he took a young plant from the land of Israel and planted it in a fertile field, where there was always water to make it grow.

6 The plant sprouted and became a low, wide-spreading grapevine. The branches grew upward toward the eagle, and the roots grew deep. The vine was covered with branches and leaves.

7 "There was another giant eagle with huge wings and thick plumage. And now the vine sent its roots toward him and turned its leaves toward him, in the hope that he would give it more water than there was in the garden where it was growing.

Footnotes

• [a]. [Hebrew has an additional word, the meaning of which is unclear.]